


More Earth Than Fire

by SwissMiss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Baby Watson, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, Smut, post-series 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:53:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3082934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwissMiss/pseuds/SwissMiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John purports to be fine. John is a terrible liar.</p><p>A post-series 3 fic filled with angst, hurt, grief, and possibly hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Earth Than Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blackbird_Song](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/gifts).



> This was written for the Winter 2014 round of Holmestice on LiveJournal as a gift for Blackbird_Song, who wanted to see Sherlock's thoughts on John's marriage. Beta read by billiethepoet and thissalsify.
> 
> In this fic, Baby Watson dies shortly after birth (nothing violent). If that might be painful for you, please consider proceeding with caution.

John purports to be fine. John is a terrible liar. Everyone knows it. Sherlock knows it. Mycroft knows it. Mary knows it. John knows it too, which is why Sherlock also knows that John is not trying to convince anyone that he is actually fine. It is merely his way of making it clear he doesn't want anyone prodding at him, ripping off his plasters, palpating his tender gut with their cold fingers and sharp nails; that he wants to be left alone to lick his wounds. Figuratively, of course. Despite everything, his legs are stronger than ever, his hands steadier, his sleep calmer.  
  
Not that Sherlock has first-hand knowledge of the latter. Not anymore. John may have moved out of the house he shared with Mary, but he hasn't returned to Baker Street. Sherlock must rely on the tint of John's skin, the tone of his muscles and the timbre of his voice to determine the quality of his slumber.  
  
John's habits don't betray him either. He goes to work — steady work, at the same clinic where he met Mary, although she's not currently on the rotation there. He eats meals on a more or less regular schedule. He goes to the shops twice a week and is safely inside his flat by midnight every night. In short: he functions. Sherlock supposes most people would call that 'fine' after all.  
  
Sherlock is not most people.  
  
John's shoulders — the same shoulders that once bore the weight of his upper body as he thrust his pelvis against Sherlock's — are sloped now from burden he is all but staggering beneath, broadcasting his distress just as loudly as any limp. The set of his jaw and flat line of his mouth — the same mouth that once enveloped Sherlock in its wet warmth — reveal that he hasn't smiled once in the past six weeks. And then there are his eyes. Sherlock finds it physically painful to witness what's happened to John's eyes.  
  
Sherlock has seen everything in those eyes as they gazed on him: anticipation and anger, arousal and astonishment, ardor and amusement. He's seen them turned eagerly upwards from where John knelt to catch a glimpse of Sherlock's face as he came, staring down dark and greedy at Sherlock bobbing between his legs, filled with the lazy tenderness of afterglow and maybe, Sherlock fancied shyly, something more.  
  
He used to be able to read every nuance of John's mood in them. Now there is no nuance. They are merely hollow and blank as John stares at the headstone. Or perhaps he is looking at a space beyond it, seeing the shadows of what might have been. Sherlock can't tell from where he stands, obscured in a small stand of trees a good fifty metres away. He's not been invited to join John. He's never invited.  
  
He comes anyway.  
  
Not just here to the cemetery on this drab, flat, hatefully ordinary Saturday afternoon. Sherlock follows John any time and everywhere. Watches him standing on the platform waiting for the Tube, queuing for falafel at one of the food trucks on his lunch break, picking out oranges and toothpaste in Asda.  
  
What choice does he have? John's turned down — politely, to be sure, but firmly — every invitation to help Sherlock on a case. Admittedly, there haven't been any particularly interesting ones coming in on the website, and Lestrade hasn't invited him to consult on anything lately. What else is Sherlock supposed to do? Ask John to meet up for a pint? And so he follows him. To and from work, the shops, the pub... the cemetery.  
  
Sherlock presumes John is aware of the tail. It's not as if he makes much of an effort to be secretive about it. This isn't the first time Sherlock's followed him here, either. John doesn't have a set day or time for these visits; he's been at least once a week, though, since... Since.  
  
It's not the same cemetery as three years ago, not the one with the tall black stone standing incongruously by itself in the middle of an expanse of grass, watching over nothing more than solid turf. This time it's a polished slab of white marble, knee-high, its corners gently curved, the earth beneath it far from barren. The other stones in its row are spaced close together, betraying the diminutive size of their charges. Many are decorated with angels and just one date. Like the one John's standing in front of.  
  
Part of John is buried here. Not just his genetic material, although that's there too, combined intimately with Mary's until it found a novel expression, a new life bearing the prospect, despite everything, of happiness and hope to a man who so desperately needed it. Deserved it. But now that hope is buried too, and John is not fine. Sherlock would exhume that hope with his bare hands if he knew how. As it is, he feels that all he can offer is messy handfuls of decay anyway.  
  
Is this how John was in the months following Sherlock's supposed demise? Just going through the motions, with all the life — the spark that made him John — leeched out of him? Did that change when he took up with Mary? Sherlock regrets, now, that he omitted observing John for a couple of days before his grand reveal at the restaurant. He'd been overeager. Full of anticipation (or perhaps anxiety). Allowed his emotions to dictate his actions. John certainly hadn't lacked for a spark that night, but now Sherlock will never know whether that was due to Mary or to his reappearance. Or whether John somehow re-discovered his essential John-ness on his own. Or never lost it. Sherlock shouldn't flatter himself.  
  
He's so focused on watching John and on his own thoughts that he completely fails to register Mary's approach until all of a sudden she's at his side, speaking.  
  
"There must be something you can do for him."  
  
Sherlock glances down at her. She has on the red coat, hip-length and cinched rather loosely at the waist. It's too warm for the mild day, despite the damp. It's also shapeless enough for it to credibly be intentional concealment for her still-thick middle. Sherlock rather thinks it's the opposite: she wants to emphasise the fact that she has something to conceal. That her body hasn't recovered from the birth. Will never be the same as it once was.  
  
It strikes Sherlock that none of them will. Why should she be accorded a privilege?  
  
Her face is pale, devoid of makeup. Her thin blonde hair is scraped back, making the angles of her face more prominent. Her eyes are shadowed and sunken. He presumes this is an artifice on her part, an attempt to make him feel sorry for her. Feel something for her, at any rate, so that he'll do what she wants. Which is, apparently, to do something for John. As if he needed her urging to act.  
  
Or perhaps this is what her grief looks like. She has suffered a loss too, after all.  
  
"He's fine," Sherlock murmurs the party line, returning his gaze to John, who is still standing in front of the tiny grave with his back to them. They're far enough away that he might not be able to hear them. Perhaps he's genuinely unaware they are here.  
  
Mary snorts, her mouth closed to keep the sound contained. "I know you're not that stupid. He won't talk to me."  
  
"You think he talks to me?" The question is not just a challenge, but born in part of genuine surprise. Has she overestimated Sherlock by that much? Or John?  
  
"Well, no," she admits, "but... the two of you were never really talkers, were you?"  
  
"He won't come with me on cases either." That was really the only thing he could ever offer John: a few hours of excitement and purpose, a short-lived burst of heart-thumping, blood-pumping action. And now John is refusing even that. Sherlock dislikes admitting his impotence to Mary, but maybe it will make her go away. It's not that he bears her any ill will, specifically; it's that he doesn't want John to see them together and think they are plotting something on his behalf. Especially as it seems that's precisely what they are doing.  
  
"Then find one he can't say no to," Mary says, about the cases, as if Sherlock is being dense.  
  
"What exactly do you expect me to do?" Sherlock hisses. "Arrange for a murder that's beyond the capability of the police to solve?"  
  
Mary exhales through her nose, short and disapproving. Sherlock isn't quite sure of the cause. Is it because she thinks Sherlock's being obtuse or uncooperative? The sad fact is, he'd cooperate if she had any useful suggestions. He's not good at this.  
  
They both fall silent. John shifts, tilts his head back to look up at the sky. They should leave before he turns around.  
  
"Was Scott actually a name from your family?" Mary asks suddenly. The words come out too quickly. She's been saving them up, not sure she wants to hear the answer but unable to hold them back any longer. "A maiden name somewhere? Because he told me it was his grandmother's, but that's not true. I did some research. One of his grandmothers was a Brown and the other was a Mitchell. I even went back to his great-grandparents. Not a Scott among them."  
  
Sherlock bristles at her lack of trust in John. Although she's perfectly right and, as noted, John is a terrible liar. It would have come out eventually. It's interesting she wasn't able to divine the true source of John's contribution to their daughter's name, however. Mycroft must have wiped the records quite thoroughly.  
  
"So is it from your family?" she presses him.  
  
"His family are from Scotland, after all," he reminds her.  
  
"Right," she says dryly.  
  
He's not going to give her more than that. He's still not sure what to make of it himself. Was John trying to even the score somehow for Mary's choice? Even without having looked at the thumb drive, the provenance of 'Gloria' isn't a difficult leap. But then Sherlock doesn't believe John would have intended to turn his own child into a battlefield. Especially as he apparently didn't want Mary to know he'd given their daughter Sherlock's middle name.  
  
John is turning to leave now. Sherlock withdraws further behind a tree. Mary crowds in beside him, but John's walking away in the opposite direction. They both watch until he turns down the next path.  
  
"Will you let me know?" Mary says, her eyes still trained in the direction John went. "How he's doing, I mean?" She looks up at Sherlock then, grimacing as she indicates her figure. "It's a bit hard for me to, you know. At the moment."  
  
Sherlock sees the exhaustion then behind those sharp blue eyes, and realises none of it is artifice. This is all she's managed to scrape together from the bits of what's left. She tried. She's trying. As hard as Sherlock is, it seems. With precisely the same amount of success.  
  
He nods. "I will." It only seems fair. She deserves to know. For trying.  
  
"Thank you." She steps away from him, drawing her shoulders up as if to hoard the warmth inside her coat.  
  
"Mary... I am sorry." He is, suddenly. Or maybe not suddenly. He hasn't given her much thought at all, in all this. He never wished her any ill, though, neither physical nor emotional. It would only find its way through her to John.  
  
She nods and gives him a quick smile that might just be genuine. "Me too." She turns, bows her head, and walks away, her hands in her pockets.  


\---ooo---

  
Sherlock and John tumble into the bathroom, breathless and laughing. Sherlock's nose has bled gloriously and the pinky finger on John's left hand is swollen and stiff. Maybe fractured but more likely sprained, he says. No need for x-rays, he'll just tape it up.  
  
Sherlock plonks himself down on the edge of the tub and dabs ineffectively at his ruined shirt with its cascade of red splashed down the front. He doesn't care. John is loudly proclaiming Sherlock's brilliance and his own prowess with his fists and elbows and knees while he washes his hands then rummages in their medical supplies.  
  
Sherlock loves watching him like this, when he's all keyed up and spouting confidence — and relief, it must be said — at another more or less successful end to one of their joint ventures. Almost as much as he loves watching John in action, tight control and efficiency battling with the urge to utterly and completely demolish. It is, he imagines, perhaps much the same way John feels watching Sherlock dig devastation out of tie pins and hospital corners. They match, in the same way in which they are complete opposites. Sherlock's heart pumps a bit faster and his blood flows a bit hotter at the thought.  
  
John crowds into the space between Sherlock's knees. He holds out a roll of cloth adhesive tape for Sherlock to help him with. His effusion has lessened a bit, but he's still grinning.  
  
"We should put a cold pack on that," he says, nodding at Sherlock's face.  
  
Sherlock grunts noncommittally as he cuts a strip of tape and starts wrapping John's pinky and ring fingers together. The bleeding's stopped. Everything else can wait until they're done here. John's standing a bit too close, really, his legs pressing against the insides of Sherlock's thighs. Sherlock could spread his legs a bit wider to give him more room. He doesn't.  
  
"He get you anywhere else?" John asks.  
  
Sherlock makes a negative sound. "Wasn't expecting his elbow to fly out like that."  
  
"He wouldn't have got you anywhere if you'd stayed out of it."  
  
"And let you have all the fun?"  
  
John chuckles.  
  
Sherlock's finished with his hand. John tries to flex it, testing the strength of the tape.  
  
"Right, shirt off," John says once he seems satisfied with Sherlock's wrapping job.  
  
"He didn't-" Sherlock starts to say, but John speaks over him. "You've got to take it off anyway, it's covered in blood. Just humour me and let me make sure that's all from your nose and you aren't bleeding anywhere else."  
  
John stays right where he is as Sherlock undoes the buttons. The twin points of contact where their legs are touching function as both anchor and fulcrum. It keeps Sherlock grounded in the here and now, but this is a tipping point. It could still go either way.  
  
Sherlock tugs his shirt out of his trousers and peels it off, dropping it behind him into the tub. John puts his hands on Sherlock's shoulders and runs them down his arms, his chest, his abdomen. He doesn't actually need to touch him to see that Sherlock's not injured anywhere else. Sherlock closes his eyes. John drops down into a crouch. His hands have ended up on Sherlock's hips, his thumbs barely brushing the skin above Sherlock's waistband. He waits until Sherlock opens his eyes again and looks down at him. John's smile is still there, playful and eager but mixed with something a bit darker too.  
  
"Yeah?" John asks. He won't be hurt if Sherlock says no. It's fun for him, part of The Game, like Chinese food and sprained fingers. They don't have Chinese food every time either, and John still keeps coming back.  
  
Sherlock shouldn't want it but he does. He's never been good at denying himself something he wants, so he slides his hips forward and leans his head back and bites his lip.  
  
John wastes no time opening Sherlock's flies and shoving his underwear out of the way. "One of these days I'll learn how to do that swallowing thing. Gonna have to settle for this for now," he says, breathless, and then there is heat, sudden and overwhelming.  
  
Sherlock couldn't possibly muster a single fuck about the swallowing thing, as John calls it. He feels like the air's been slammed out of his lungs. Or perhaps it's been diverted downward, as he fills out in John's mouth. The sensation of warmth lessens as his own heat increases, being overtaken by wet slickness, and Sherlock has to look.  
  
John has his eyes squeezed shut, his forehead creased in concentration. His lips encase Sherlock's girth and he has the thumb and index finger of his uninjured hand placed delicately at the base to steady him. His head is moving back and forth, unimaginative but relentless. Sherlock doesn't have a chance. Doesn't want one. John is danger and chemicals, competence with sharp bits. All of Sherlock's favourite things.  
  
John's breath comes in short, sharp bursts from his flaring nostrils in time with his strokes. Sherlock grips the edge of the tub with both hands. The opening of his trousers is wet from John's spit dribbling down. John adjusts his grip now that Sherlock's fully erect, wrapping three fingers around him to hold him in place. He slides forward and back, forward and back, picking up the pace and making little sounds in his throat. Sherlock wants those sounds in his own throat, wants to suck them right out of John's mouth and make them his. His chest aches. It's getting worse with time. He looks up at the ceiling again.  
  
Forward and back, forward and back. Slick, pressure, John. It's becoming difficult to keep his hips still on the edge of the tub. He closes his eyes and drops his chin to his chest. His mouth hangs open — impossible to breathe through his swollen, blood-clotted nose. The ache drops into his stomach, sizzles down even lower, burning a path to John's tongue right through his flesh. He's not going to be able to hold back the surge any longer.  
  
"John, now," he says, quick and low as the crest builds. "Now now now oh God oh God!" His voice spirals upward. So does he. John pulls off just in time before Sherlock's pelvis clenches and convulses, his hips snapping up, out of his control. John's hand flies over Sherlock's penis, finishing him off. Sherlock manages to retain enough presence of mind not to tip backwards into the bathtub.  
  
When it's over, Sherlock is panting and his head is throbbing, every pounding of his heart amplified in his swollen nose. His mouth is full of the tang of metal. It feels like every ounce of energy has been leeched out of him and is now congealing somewhere on the green hexagonal tiles at his feet.  
  
Sherlock gives up any pretense of fighting gravity and slides down onto the floor, his knees angled up and the side of the bathtub cold against his bare back. His penis hangs red and bedraggled out of his open trousers.  
  
"You okay?" Sherlock has his eyes closed, but John's voice sounds slightly amused.  
  
Sherlock's heart is still racing. He is not okay. He is glorious. "Give me a second, I'll-" He raises one hand limply.  
  
"You don't have to, really, that was pretty exciting already, to tell you the truth."  
  
Sherlock opens his eyes to see John kneeling in front of him, a lopsided, pleased, entirely genuine grin on his face. The ache in Sherlock's chest returns with a vengeance. He surges forward to kiss him, nipping at his lips and tasting himself on John's breath.  
  
Sherlock would like very much, at this point, to drag John back to his room — the caveman imagery, incidentally, not being lost on him — and take his time unpeeling, unveiling, undoing, unraveling... and maybe, finally, understanding.  
  
But they never go into one of the bedrooms. Not for this. (Perhaps the caveman symbolism hasn't been lost on John, either.) This is for tilting against the wall and tumbling onto the floor and tangling on the couch. There is no place here for lingering caresses or lazy kisses or simply letting their bodies share what their hearts want to say. Sherlock has no idea what John's heart would say to him, actually. He does know that John likes it fast and hard and straightforward, so that's what he will give him.  
  
He pulls back to see there's blood smeared on John's upper lip and cheek. Sherlock's blood. It will have to serve, in lieu of any more overtly possessive gesture. He scrabbles at John's flies, his fingers uncoordinated in the aftermath of his system reset. John chuckles and doesn't help him, which Sherlock first thinks is rather unsporting of him, but then recalls the taped fingers of his left hand. John does help, then, once the button is open and the zip is down, getting up on his knees to work his jeans and pants down one-handed past his hips, just far enough to expose his penis. It juts out at an angle from his body and already has beads of clear fluid welling up from it. Sherlock's mouth starts watering in anticipation.  
  
"Sit up on the toilet, then I can-" Sherlock says, but John touches Sherlock's cheek. "Your face," he reminds him ruefully. "You really don't-"  
  
But Sherlock is already up on his knees, reaching for the antibacterial hand soap on the back of the sink. They have never bought personal lubricant, which is perhaps telling. John may have some up in his room for his own use. Sherlock has no idea. He pumps out a dollop and reaches down to take John in hand. He wraps his other arm around John's back to squeeze their torsos together and works him, brisk and firm in the dark space between their bodies.  
  
John returns the embrace with both arms, the two of them steadying each other there on the cold tile floor. He huffs into the side of Sherlock's neck, saying things like, “Genius... gorgeous... God... so good...”  
  
Sherlock is still in the grip of the chemicals coursing through his body and brain. He knows the name, function, and structure of every one of them: dopamine, vasopressin, serotonin, and most damning of all, oxytocin. He is floating, he is free, he is everywhere and everything. He is also so slow and heavy he will never be able to escape the gravitational pull of the object he is currently orbiting.  
  
John's grip tightens and his pelvis thrusts in short, unconscious jerks into Sherlock's hand. His mouth presses hard into the top of Sherlock's shoulder. It's not exactly a kiss. He's making those sounds in his throat again. Sherlock leans his head against John's, creating a kind of awkward embrace between his cheek and his shoulder. The sounds go right through Sherlock's skin and drop down into his heart.  
  
Sherlock's arm is getting tired from the repetitive motion but he would do this for hours if John wanted him to. He won't need to, though. He recognises the signs by now. John's breaths are coming closer together and his body is tensing up. If Sherlock had a hand free to reach down to John's testicles, he would find them full and tight.  
  
Sherlock moves his arm just a little bit faster and clutches John just a little bit closer. "John... come on..." he encourages him, breathy and low.  
  
Something like a whine breaks out of John's throat and he lifts his head enough to say in a broken voice, "Fuck Sherlock, you're gonna make me..."  
  
The lovely achy presence in Sherlock's chest intensifies, becoming something fierce. "Like that, yes..." he growls, and at that moment he would, with absolute, terrifying certainty, destroy anyone who touched John the way he is now, who would try to lure those breaths and those sounds and those words out of John. No one else has the right to them. No one.  
  
John's arms are like steel bands around Sherlock's ribcage. His hips seize up, his buttocks tighten, and warmth blooms between them. Sherlock keeps his hand moving, but more lightly now. John gasps and takes a shuddering breath, and then there is more warmth. Sherlock slows and pets and squeezes out the last drops as John rocks against him.  
  
They hang onto each other, both of their hearts racing.

\---ooo---

  
"John not with you?" Lestrade leans back to look out into the hall of the dingy council flat. It's empty but for a forensics tech in disposable blue coveralls grumbling to a jaded uniform.  
  
"Your powers of observation are improving daily," Sherlock says. He whips out a pair of examination gloves and flips his coat back to crouch down beside the body. Lestrade had said they suspected it was a serial killer, but Sherlock can already see four indicators that point to this being the work of a neophyte copycat. Still, not uninteresting.  
  
Lestrade shifts his weight and shoves his hands up under his armpits. "I just thought maybe..." he ventures. "First investigation we've called you in on since, you know, the baby. Thought he might have wanted to come out. I guess maybe it's still too soon."  
  
"John's working," Sherlock says curtly and leans in to get a better look at the victim's tongue, which has nearly been severed. But only nearly. Indicator number five.  
  
That's not the reason John didn't come with him, though, even if it's coincidentally true. Sherlock doesn't particularly want to have to explain that he texted John — even went so far as to ring him to invite him along — only to have his call shunted to voice mail and his text go unanswered. He's not worried something might have happened to John, though. Sherlock sent the text and made the call from a cafe just down the street from the clinic, where he'd followed John that morning. He waited half an hour in case John was stuck with a patient before setting off to meet Lestrade without him.  
  
"Oh. Right," Lestrade says awkwardly. "Well, that's good, right?" he says, trying to sound upbeat. "I mean if he's feeling up to going back to work?"  
  
"You'd know better than I."  
  
"What's that supposed to mean now?"  
  
"You're the one who's been through a separation from your wife following a miscarriage, not me."  
  
Lestrade drops his arms and gapes. "Bloody hell, Sherlock, it's not the same thing at all! Jill was only two months gone and we weren't good anyway. But no kidding, did he and Mary separate now too?"  
  
"He's taken a room in Swindon."  
  
"Well, maybe it's not permanent. They might just need a little space. I mean, the two of them were perfect for each other, weren't they? She even managed to put up with you."  
  
"Better than John did, apparently," Sherlock says coldly. "Now have I stumbled onto the set of Jeremy Kyle or do you actually want me to help you solve this case?"  
  
Lestrade shuts up and Sherlock turns back to the dead woman. All of a sudden, he's lost all interest in her, in her killer, in everything constantly circling back to John.  


\---ooo---

  
Sherlock knows he really shouldn't indulge like this. Not the cigarettes — well, yes, those too, now that he's hooked himself on them again. It's awfully inconvenient to have a craving peak three hours into an interrogation. That was four days ago, though. He's safe now — or what passes for safe these days — and the cuts on his chest have scabbed over.  
  
He takes another drag, deep and slow, then blows it out the window over the rooftops of Prague. It could almost be London, just shy of five a.m., the sky tilting from black to gray to smudgy lavender behind the silhouettes of a thousand years of history. It smells wrong, though. Where London is ozone and iron, Prague is wood and sulphur. A little more fire, a little less earth.  
  
It's a good thing it isn't London, because if it were, John wouldn't be twelve hundred kilometres away and Sherlock might well not be able to resist lessening the distance to mere centimetres, if that.  
  
He shifts his weight where he's sitting on the windowsill, one leg propped up so he can rest his elbow on his knee, letting the blue smoke from his Petra float out the window. His other hand is cupping his testicles, heavy and full in his pyjama trousers. He can't not think of John anymore when he does this, which is why he avoids it. It's not as if he needs it. He never has, used to go months — years, even — without touching himself, without being aroused, without letting the tide sweep over and engulf him, leaving him scoured raw and gasping.  
  
His thumb presses into the thickening flesh at the base of his penis of its own accord. The shaft twitches in response. John always went straight for his penis. No faffing about with nipples or earlobes or pulse points. Even his testicles were a distant second thought, possibly getting a few incidental licks or strokes as John applied himself to getting Sherlock off in the quickest time possible.  
  
Sherlock puts his hand inside his pyjamas and starts stroking. There's not any finesse involved, no clever flicks of the wrist or fancy swirls of the thumb. Just friction, really, and the knowledge that John was happy, that this made John happy, and that Sherlock got to do the same thing to him, this primal, primitive dance. It doesn't mean anything. It's all just chemicals. Survival of the species. The dopamine released in the build-up to orgasm is equal to a hit of heroin.  
  
Sherlock closes his eyes and imagines his own heavy breathing is John's, his huffs of laughter giving way to stuttering, muffled grunts. Those little involuntary sounds that flew right into the empty spaces in Sherlock's heart, their wings fluttering and beating in his chest, a descant to the racing of his pulse. This is why, this right here is why he should never allow himself to give in, because those spaces are hollow and gaping and there is nothing left to fill them. No winks over severed limbs, no toes brushing his under the table at breakfast, no footsteps pounding in rhythm with his, no breathless whispers against his neck. His own hand is a poor substitute for the one he wants. He's never been good at denying himself what he wants.  
  
Sherlock's body jolts and jerks and empties itself. The wetness quickly turns cold and unpleasant in the air from the open window. Sherlock opens his eyes. Prague. The sun's now definitively up. He needs to move to a less exposed position. He's managed to keep hold of his cigarette in his other hand, but it's burnt down to the filter. He flicks it away and watches the orange glow tumble down the sloped tile roof until it disappears over the edge, then lights another.  


\---ooo---

  
"He's having a really hard time, you know."  
  
"I'd imagine so, without his brain," Sherlock remarks, cocking an eyebrow at Molly as she carefully frees the organ from the sawed-open skull of the man lying on the slab between them.  
  
She frowns and shoots him an irritated look. "John," she says, as if it should be obvious that's whom she'd meant.  
  
Sherlock bristles. He came here to distract himself from John and his own desperate inadequacy regarding the entire situation. Not only that, it irks him immensely — and illogically — that Molly is concerned about John. That's not fair, he knows. She's his friend (too, he wants to add, but he's honestly not sure whether John considers him a friend anymore at all). It's only a measure of how well-liked John is that people other than Sherlock are thinking of him. But Molly is apparently not merely thinking of him, Sherlock realises, his brain damnably slow to parse what it was that she said. She has been to see him; talked to him. Something neither Sherlock nor Mary have managed.  
  
"Yes, I imagine having one's child die would do that to you," Sherlock says archly.  
  
Molly dumps the brain a bit more roughly than necessary into the pan of the scale. "Sherlock Holmes," she says fiercely as she rounds on him, "you are not allowed to be cavalier about this! John is the best man you or I know, and he's grieving, and he's all alone."  
  
"Clearly he wasn't alone if you went to see him." He knows he's not making things any better for himself by saying things like that, but he can't help it. Why does Molly get to be the one John lets in? And then to bring it up like it's Sherlock's fault.  
  
"It's not the same. I'm not-" She shakes her head. "I'm not you."  
  
Sherlock tosses his hands in the air. "Why does everyone think I have some secret formula for making John Watson happy?" he cries, genuinely irritated.  
  
Molly stares at him. "Because you do."  
  
"I really don't." If he did, John would never have gone through a string of girlfriends while he was living with Sherlock. If he did, John would never have married Mary. If he did, John would have come to him after Gloria died instead of retreating to that horrid little one-room flat all the way out in Swindon.  
  
"He needs you, Sherlock."  
  
"He knows where to find me."  
  
Molly's expression becomes both troubled and disapproving. "He doesn't even know where to find himself."  
  
She turns back to the scale and depresses the foot pedal to turn on the audio recorder, then recites the weight displayed on the digital readout in a flat, detached voice. Sherlock jots it down for his own records as well. They don't mention John again.  


\---ooo---

  
John is happy. Mary makes John happy. John is happy with Mary. Happy, happy, happy. Sherlock repeats the word to himself until it becomes nonsensical.  
  
What's nonsensical was Sherlock's assumption that time would stop when he left London. That he could come back and pick John up right where he left him, literally pick him up from where he collapsed on the street outside St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Sherlock had actually thought — with his big, stupid, genius brain — that John would go back to the same drab little existence he'd had before he met Sherlock, the one small change being that he would remain in the flat they'd shared. Sherlock had made sure Mycroft arranged something with Mrs Hudson about the rent for precisely that purpose. What did he need the flat maintained for if John wasn't in it? Ridiculous.  
  
But then it turned out John had got himself a mustache and a fiancée and a prospect of a partnership in a thriving practise, and that Sherlock was completely, utterly superfluous. Not integral to John's life. To his happiness.  
  
Not the way, it developed, that John was integral to Sherlock's.  
  
John is happy when he arrives at the flat hand-in-hand with Mary, their arms overflowing with binders of swatches and samples and mockups.  
  
John is happy when Mary perches on the back of his chair, her hand on his shoulder, and recounts something mildly amusing that happened at the clinic the week before for Sherlock's benefit. (Sherlock wonders whether John remembers Sherlock kneeling in front of that chair, gagging on John's penis. He wonders whether Mary does the same thing at their flat. Perhaps that is why John appears so amused at such a ridiculous, trivial story. Sherlock resolves to delete that thought, but it's persistent. Later, it takes several applications of cocaine and the eventual removal of the chair from the living room before he's able to manage it.)  
  
John is even happy when the takeout delivery gets his order wrong and he ends up with the prawn tikka instead of the fish. He doesn't like shellfish, so Mary shares her vindaloo with him and John steals some of Sherlock's murgh banjara, and Sherlock ends up eating most of the tikka at John's urging, so that by the end of the evening they're all giggling and sated and there are grease stains on the front of John's shirt where Mary dropped something she was trying to feed him from her fork, and Sherlock has a matching stain on his shirt where John threw a prawn at him, and Sherlock doesn't realise that the ache in his chest isn't from laughing so hard until it's almost too late.  
  
Happy, happy, happy.

\---ooo---

 

Sherlock steps into the pub. It's dim and smells of stale beer and cigarettes even though no smoking is allowed on the premises. John is sitting at one of the tables lining the perimeter of the room. He has already spotted Sherlock. He sighs and looks down at his pint. Sherlock goes to the bar and orders one for himself. The last time they went to a pub together was John's stag night. This may not have been the best idea after all. Sherlock dismisses the thought. It's too late now. He takes the glass from the barman and walks back to John.  
  
John slides over on the bench to make room for Sherlock, but Sherlock opts for one of the wooden scrollwork chairs on the other side of the table instead. He's not sure he could keep his mind on task with John's thigh pressed against his.  
  
John doesn't even wait for Sherlock to pull his chair in before he speaks. "I wondered if you were ever going to talk to me or if you were just going to spend the rest of your life following me around."  
  
Sherlock would do, if he thought it would be useful. "I have tried to contact you several times," he points out. He settles back and stretches his legs out. He deliberately angles them away from John.  
  
"Yeah. Lack of response didn't give you a clue?" John mutters. He flicks his gaze at Sherlock but looks away almost immediately.  
  
Something unpleasant stirs in Sherlock's gut. Well, he can't make it much worse, he reasons. He's not leaving without getting some answers, at the very least.  
  
"Are you... angry at me?” he asks. “Have I done something?" But that's the wrong question. Sherlock hasn't done anything. That's precisely the problem.  
  
John's face folds into an impossible number of creases as he lifts his eyes again. They're not empty, but this is almost worse. "No," John says, his voice almost strangled. "No, God no, it's not you. I'm sorry. It's-" He leans back and pushes his drink away. "I can't. I'm not ready to talk about it."  
  
The unpleasantness loosens. "I sometimes don't talk for days at a time," Sherlock offers.  
  
John almost smiles. Not quite, but at least the lines on his face start to turn around and his eyes don't seem quite so despairing. He shakes a finger at Sherlock. "That wasn't very nice of you, you know. Luring me there under false pretences."  
  
Sherlock allows himself to hope that things aren't entirely broken. "I'm not a very nice man." He means it playfully, but it seems it was the wrong thing to say because John suddenly becomes serious again.  
  
"That is not true," John says, slowly and deliberately. "I'm the one who's not very nice."  
  
Sherlock frowns. He's not sure whether John means because he's walked out on Mary or because he's been avoiding Sherlock or something else.  
  
"You're having a rough patch,” Sherlock says. “It's perfectly understandable you'd want to take some time for yourself."  
  
John snorts. "Yeah, is it? Because I have no idea what I'm doing. I've abandoned my grieving wife, I've handed in my notice so I'll be out of a job come the end of the month, and I've alienated the only person in the world who I actually want in my life. And, I ordered this fucking artisan beer and it tastes like horse piss. Which, I actually know what that tastes like, ta very much."  
  
"That was an important piece of evidence," Sherlock huffs. "It ended up proving that jockey's innocence."  
  
John catches Sherlock's eye and his face does the most glorious thing, everything lifting and curving upward, and then he's giggling. Sherlock takes a snapshot of his face and carefully folds it into one of the empty spaces he's been left with, the ones that not even cases and cocaine can eradicate or fill. He wants to put his hands on that face and hold it just like that, put his own face against it and feel the lines and curves, the bumps and ridges, against his cheek, his chin, his mouth. Imagining it makes him feel light, and Sherlock can't help joining in with John's chuckles, which quickly turn into a full-bodied laugh.  
  
Sherlock has no idea why they're laughing. He only made a factual statement in defense of the frozen horse urine in the ice cube tray. In the past, such exchanges have resulted in outraged shouting and lectures on tedious things like informed consent and public health risks. Sherlock decides it doesn't matter why John thinks it's funny. It occurs to him that perhaps there is something to Molly's secret formula theory, even if the formula remains a mystery to Sherlock as well.  
  
As their amusement fades to a faint soreness in Sherlock's cheeks, he decides to press forward with the reason he's here tonight. He facilitated their reconciliation once before. He can do it again. This will make John happy, in the long run. Molly is right: John shouldn't be alone. Anyone can see that alone does not make him happy.  
  
"She'll forgive you, John," Sherlock sighs. "What am I saying, there's nothing to forgive, and she knows that too. You can go back to her whenever you're ready. She loves you." Sherlock adds that last bit because it's the kind of thing that matters to John.  
  
The downward creases have returned to John's face. He shifts uncomfortably on his seat. "She tell you that?"  
  
"She doesn't need to." She wouldn't insult Sherlock like that.  
  
"Because I would have thought you could see from how my shirt's buttoned or something..." John mutters. "We're petitioning for a divorce. Turned in the initial paperwork a couple of weeks ago."  
  
Sherlock is momentarily knocked off balance. How did he not see that? That meant they'd already submitted the papers before Mary approached Sherlock at the cemetery. Sherlock is startled by the implication.  
  
"I'm sorry," he says rather formally. He really is. Whatever faults Mary may have had, whatever errors she may have made, she did give John something he wanted, some elusive element that Sherlock was never quite able to duplicate. He's not sure now how to proceed.  
  
John lets out a soft sigh. "It's all amicable. I mean... Obviously it's been over between us for a while. I'm not worried she's going to come after me, shoot me in the chest at point-blank range or anything." It's a terrible attempt at humour, which John seems to realise as soon as he's said it. He blanches and mutters, "Sorry."  
  
"It's fine," Sherlock says. He's been using that phrase far too often lately. Mary's motives were complicated. Still are, for that matter. But mere jealousy or possessiveness was never part of it. She was — and is — a professional. There's no room for emotion in that line of work. Sherlock knows this. "For what it's worth, she does still love you," he repeats. It's a paltry attempt at comfort, but Sherlock has nothing else to offer.  
  
"God." John runs his hand down his face. "I don't think either of us knows what love is. No, scratch that; I..." He presses his lips together, then says carefully, speaking to the condensation running down the outside of his glass: "The people we thought we loved never really existed. Me and Mary, those were two people who saw what they wanted to in each other. Not what was really there."  
  
Now Sherlock is curious. "What did you see in her?" He's fairly certain it's not the same things he himself saw that first night he met her.  
  
John's shoulders sag. "I don't even know now. Stability, I guess. The prospect of not being alone. Having something to show for my life. I think not a small amount of wanting to prove to myself I was my own man... You know, that I could do something, be something that didn't involve you." His lips curve upwards in a vaguely bitter smile. "And we did have fun. She _is_ witty and clever. And even with everything, she's..." He shakes his head. "I don't believe she's a bad person. But she's not... When I finally had everything I thought I wanted — a lovely wife, a solid position, the respect of my peers — it was like getting to the end of the rainbow and finding the pot of gold, only it turned out what I really needed was cash if I wanted to buy anything." He lifts his glass and takes a deep draught.  
  
Sherlock understands what John is trying to say: that the wife and the job mean nothing in the face of a tragedy like the death of a child. But the basic ingredients are still there. He needn't throw everything away. "You'd only have to sell the gold to get cash," he points out.  
  
But John doesn't seem to understand what Sherlock is trying to say. He shakes his head again. "It's not literal, it's... The point is, I found out all that wasn't what was going to make me happy. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but it's not what I needed. Not what I need,” he corrects himself, “or want. It didn't matter so much with Gloria on the way... I meant to be a good father, or at least try my best, and I could deal with all the rest. But when she died, it was as if... I woke up or something, I suppose. I realised that the woman I was married to wasn't the person I thought she was. I'd known it for a long time already, really, but like I said I was willing to move past that for Gloria. Mary was just playing a part, and maybe she was good at it, maybe she could have kept it up for the rest of our lives, but I couldn't." He takes another drink, nearly draining his glass.  
  
Sherlock tries to process everything John's said. It doesn't seem to add up. "But you said Mary's the only person you want in your life."  
  
John grimaces at the taste of his beer, then frowns and blinks, backtracking mentally. When understanding dawns, his expression softens. "I wasn't talking about her, you nit," he says gently.  
  
Sherlock stares. He experiences a similar feeling to the day when John asked him to be his best man. Not specifically the best man request per se, because he certainly hadn't been looking forward to performing that particular duty, but the fact that John had said Sherlock was one of the two most important people in his life, that he was his best friend, and that he loved him. In whatever capacity that might be. And now he's saying... what exactly is he saying? That he wants Sherlock in his life? That Sherlock is the only person who matters to him? Surely that can't be right.  
  
"But if you..." Sherlock's brain is incredibly slow to return to the thread of the conversation. It's like trying to gain traction in a marsh. "Why have you been ignoring my attempts to contact you? Why didn't you speak to me earlier?"  
  
John sucks in a breath and huffs it out again. "Because there are things I need to tell you. And they're going to be hard. And I really didn't want to. But I think it's time." He nods as if to punctuate his statement. "Right, so, you going to finish that?" He raises his eyebrows at Sherlock's drink. John's own glass is already empty, horse piss or not.  
  
Sherlock has completely forgotten about his beer. He only bought it to have an excuse to sit down. He pushes it across the table toward John.  
  
"No, that wasn't-" John starts to say, but then he shrugs a little and picks up the glass. He drinks about half of it in several long gulps, then holds it out to Sherlock. "Here, finish that off and let's get out of here."  
  
Sherlock takes the glass back and puts it to his lips, making sure to drink from the clean side. It would be too dangerous to presume John's meaning here. He drains it as quickly as he can, his eyes never leaving John's.  


\---ooo---

  
"You can uh... sit down anywhere," John says as he closes the door to his flat behind them. Although calling it a flat is generous. It's a room, and not much of one at that. There isn't much choice when it comes to seating options, either. The inventory consists of a single bed, a wardrobe with one door missing, and a table slash desk with a television bolted to the wall above it. The lone chair is nearly buried under a heap of what looks like all of John's laundry. Altogether unlike the tidiness Sherlock recalls from various unsanctioned forays into John's room at Baker Street. A counter with a hot plate on it juts out on one side of the room, forming a kind of niche. Sherlock can hear the buzz of an inefficient mini-fridge somewhere on the other side. Sherlock (defiantly, selfishly, greedily) chooses the bed.  
  
John doesn't seem to notice. He walks past him to the table, which is cluttered with newspapers and other papers.  
  
"You never saw her, did you?" John asks.  
  
Sherlock knows he means Gloria. He shakes his head. "No." There was no funeral, just a small graveside ceremony. He wasn't invited anyway. He watched from his vantage point in the trees.  
  
"Hold on." John moves some papers aside and picks up a blue folder. He brings it over and sits down next to Sherlock.  
  
He opens the file and balances it on his lap. Sherlock can see it contains medical records and official-looking certificates. It also contains photographs, the kind taken with an instant camera. John picks up one of the photographs and hands it to Sherlock.  
  
It is of a newborn infant cradled in someone's arms; John's, Sherlock realises immediately. The picture shows only his chest and arms, but his wedding ring is visible on the hand that's caressing the baby's — Gloria's — cheek. He is wearing a blue hospital smock, the kind they give you to toss on over your street clothes. It was an emergency C-section. They'd gone for a regular non-stress test in the thirty-first week and found Gloria was struggling. Her heart rate was erratic and dropping dangerously low. In the picture, she is wrapped in a yellow blanket with blue and pink stripes around the edges. All of the monitoring equipment has been removed. John's hand obscures half of her face, but Sherlock can still see that her skin tone is too grey, her body too limp.  
  
"They let us hold her after they unhooked her from all the machines. Here's another one, you can see her a bit better." John lifts out a second photograph from the file.  
  
This time Mary's holding her. She's pulled back the blanket and picked up one of Gloria's hands. The tiny, stubby fingers are purple.  
  
"She actually breathed on her own for a while after," John says. His voice is uneven but he keeps going. "Kept starting and stopping. There were a few moments when... I thought, one more miracle, you know. Like you did. She never cried, never made a sound at all. I don't even know exactly when she died. We just realised she hadn't taken a breath for a few minutes and ... yeah. They called it."  
  
John had rung Sherlock what must have been several hours later, delivering the news in a flat, tightly controlled voice. The same voice he'd used at Christmas when he'd told Mary he was coming back.  
  
'It was a girl,' he'd said. 'She lived five and a half hours. She had a transposition of the great arteries, which is uh... her blood was basically circulating backwards. She inhaled meconium and arrested in utero. They worked on her a long time, but she'd been without oxygen too long before they got her out. We let her go.' The last word ended in a squeak, and was followed by silence. Sherlock wasn't sure whether John was waiting for him to respond or trying to regain control over his voice. Sherlock was about to say something — what, he had no idea — when John added one more statement: 'We named her Gloria Scott Watson.' Then he'd ended the call. It was the last time John had initiated contact between them. He'd moved out of his and Mary's flat a week later, once Mary was home from the hospital.  
  
Sherlock studies the two pictures in his hands, memorising every detail. This may be the only time he gets to see it. He tries to descry something of John in her features. She has wide set eyes and a rather broad nose. Her features appear thick and puffy, probably from the interventions they had to perform. "She's beautiful," Sherlock says. She is John's. Of course she is beautiful.  
  
"Yeah. She had-" John clears his throat, but his voice continues to come out raspy. "She had blue eyes. She never opened them on her own, but when they were evaluating her neurological status we could- They were blue."  
  
Sherlock's throat feels tight. "I'm sorry," he says in a low voice.  
  
"Yeah, me too." John takes the picture of Gloria and Mary back and looks down at it. "I should have called you while she was still... There was so much going on. It's just excuses now, I know. But I wish you could have seen her."  
  
"It's all right," Sherlock says, even though it patently isn't, because he doesn't know what else to say.  
  
"No, it's not. But I can't change it now."  
  
Sherlock isn't sure why John is sharing these pictures and this story with him. It's obviously painful for him to do so. The file was underneath several days' worth of newspapers. John clearly doesn't take it out very often. Sherlock imagines he's supposed to say something at this point, but he can't think of anything. He remembers what Mary said, that he and John were never really talkers. Maybe he doesn't need to say anything. If it were him, it would certainly be enough for John just to be there with him. Maybe it's enough for John, too.  
  
So Sherlock waits. Holds the picture of John and his dead baby and waits, and wants. He's never been good at denying himself what he wants. He manages it for John.  
  
John inhales sharply and starts to speak again. His voice is steadier now, more upbeat. "Back when Mary was pregnant, I used to imagine, you know? What it would be like after the baby was born. And the funny thing is — I didn't realise this until later, but — I never thought about me and Mary doing things with her. It was always me taking her to your flat. I'd think about whether it would be better to try and navigate the Tube with the pram or if I was going to have to suffer the indignity of one of those kangaroo packs." He grins, looking down at the picture of Mary and Gloria.  
  
"I'd have paid for you to take a taxi, of course," Sherlock tells him.  
  
"No, you would not have," John says sternly.  
  
"Or I would have come to you."  
  
John darts his tongue out over his bottom lip and appears to consider. "Yeah. I guess I didn't- That wasn't how I pictured it. It was always me, coming to Baker Street with her. I'd sit in that old armchair, you know, the one in front of the fireplace."  
  
"Your chair."  
  
"It's not... " John sighs but then purses his lips in a wry smile. "Yeah," he agrees, his voice soft. "My chair. And I'd be holding her — this would be before she could sit up properly. So I'd hold her, propping her head up so she could see you, and you'd be standing in front of the fireplace or the window, pacing back and forth while you played your violin, and we'd just sit and watch you. She would have loved that."  
  
"I would have liked to play for her," Sherlock says. He can picture it too. John smiling at him in that way he used to, fondness mixed with a bit of what might be pride. He should have played for John more often. He didn't think it important back then, those quiet moments. He'd always been out for action, excitement, and stimulation, and John thrived on all of that too, so it was good.  
  
But while he certainly wants John to join him on cases again, it's mostly the other things that Sherlock wishes he could have back. Sunday morning breakfast. Laughing over the classifieds. Two toothbrushes in the cup. Texts for no reason. Waking in the wee hours with a crick in his neck and his entire left side numb because they'd fallen asleep together on the couch. John twitching awake with a gasp, his heart racing from a nightmare. Putting his arms around John and holding him tight, back to chest, until he'd caught his breath. Murmuring against the back of his neck that they were safe at home and everything was all right. Having it be true.  
  
"And then," John continues, "when she was a little older, you'd be sitting at the kitchen table looking at something unspeakable under the microscope — slices of cirrhotic liver or something — and she'd be on your lap, grabbing for the eyepiece and drooling on your Brooks Brothers."  
  
"I don't wear Brooks Brothers, honestly you should know that, John."  
  
John gives him a sidelong smile. "Yeah, probably should. You know the brand of every article of clothing I own, don't you?"  
  
"I used to."  
  
John's smile fades. "Yeah. I think you knew more about me than I did myself."  
  
"I missed most of the important things."  
  
There is silence for a beat or two before John says quietly, "I don't think you did."  
  
Sherlock is fairly certain he doesn't imagine the way John's eyes flicker down to Sherlock's mouth. It's just a fraction of a second, but the moment is there.  
  
John is looking at the picture again now though. He speaks with an almost forced briskness: "Or — just one more — later, when she could talk, you and she sitting on the floor with the skull between you, and she's reciting all the bones as you point to them."  
  
"You'd have practised with her beforehand of course, to impress me."  
  
"No, this would be all your doing. You'd-" John ducks his head and squeezes his eyes shut. He presses his thumb and forefinger against them. "Hell," he says after a moment, then clears his throat. "Sorry. But do you see? I wanted... I wanted her to be yours, Sherlock." He turns his head to look at Sherlock. His blue eyes are pink at the edges.  
  
"She would have been," Sherlock says, and he means it with all his heart. "As much as she could have." He never wanted a child. He still doesn't. But he would have done everything John imagined for Gloria, and much more. And, he thinks, he probably would have loved her. He wants to take John's hand right then, the one that's clamped around the edge of the folder on his lap. Squeeze it and hold it and feel John's skin and warm, solid muscle and let him feel Sherlock's. It's an odd thing, because it's not something he ever would have done before. Holding each other's penises was somehow okay, but not holding each other's hands.  
  
On the other hand, everything is different now. Maybe, now, Sherlock's hand over John's would be acceptable. He lays the picture he's still holding back in the folder on John's lap. Then, as he pulls his hand back, he lets his fingers brush the back of John's hand and pauses there. John doesn't flinch away. Sherlock slowly lowers his hand until it covers John's completely. He hardly dares to breathe.  
  
John looks down at their hands. He inhales sharply and nods after a moment. "Yeah, she would have. But there was something else."  
  
“What?” Sherlock's mind is vexingly distracted by the sensation of John's hand under his. It's a struggle not to let his thumb caress the back of John's wrist.  
  
John takes a deep breath and lets it out again. "She had Down syndrome. We didn't know it then. Mary'd declined to have an amnio done, said she'd want the baby either way, but ..."  
  
Sherlock's eyes snap back to the other picture in John's hands. He tilts his head to line up his view. Everything clicks into place. The flat bridge of her nose, the shape of her eyes, the short fingers...  
  
"We agreed to genetic testing afterwards, to see whether the heart defect was caused by some syndrome that might be inheritable. In case we ever..." John shakes his head. "Not that we would have. There was no question in my mind, anyway, and I think Mary knew it too. Anyway, it turned out she had an extra chromosome. Half of Down's patients have some kind of heart defect. Not generally quite so spectacular, of course. Mostly some kind of small hole that can be fixed relatively easily. They don't usually end up with all the plumbing switched around."  
  
Sherlock bumps his shoulder against John's. "She's definitely a Watson, didn't want to do anything halfway."  
  
John laughs, briefly, but the sound is choked off before it can really start. John presses the fist with the picture against his mouth.  
  
"Oh my God. Sherlock, I let my daughter die. I just sat there and watched her take her last breath and I didn't do a fucking thing about it."  
  
"You were with her. You held her."  
  
John shakes his head, a jerky motion. "I keep thinking I should have made them try harder, keep her on the vent longer. What if the surgeons had given up on you five minutes earlier?"  
  
Sherlock doesn't like the reminder of how much grief he's caused John over the course of their acquaintance. "Her doctors would have argued against it if there had been any reasonable chance of her ever leading a meaningful life,” he tells him, avoiding the other point entirely.  
  
"A meaningful life?" John exclaims, incredulous. "Who am I to judge? Is that what I have? Is this a meaningful life, right here?" He sweeps his hand around the shabby space.  
  
Sherlock doesn't even need to think about that. The world without John Watson would not be right. Unthinkable. John Watson, Sherlock thinks, may quite literally keep the world on its axis. Sherlock's world, at any rate. He doesn't know how to say all that, but he hopes it comes through in his answer: "Yes."  
  
Sherlock must not have said it right, though, because John turns to face Sherlock, his face distorted by anger and self-loathing. "I have failed at everything I have ever wanted to do." He pulls his hand away from Sherlock's so he can hold up his fingers and enumerate: "I failed as a surgeon. I failed as a soldier. I failed as a son and as a brother. I failed as a husband. I failed as a- a friend to you. And, my crowning achievement, I have now failed, utterly and completely, as a father. I mean, I know I didn't have much of a shot at it, but I couldn't even give my daughter a bloody normal set of chromosomes! I don't think there's really anything left," he concludes bitterly.  
  
Sherlock's eyes flash his own displeasure at John's imbecilic, self-indulgent rant. "You are not a failure," he says, every word bearing witness to its truth. "You have never failed me, John. You did not fail Gloria. You must know that. You gave her a lifetime's worth of love in those five hours. And I'm certain Mary would say you didn't fail her either. You have never failed to give anything but your best."  
  
"I didn't with you," John says in a small, flat voice.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"I didn't..." He shakes his head and mutters, "God, I don't know what I was thinking. You were — " He deliberately puts his hand over Sherlock's this time, lacing their fingers firmly together. "You are the best thing to ever happen to me, and I took it all for granted."  
  
"I was the one who left," Sherlock says. His throat has suddenly gone dry.  
  
John frowns minutely. He rubs his thumb back and forth against Sherlock's. "Before that, I didn't... I think I was afraid. That you'd laugh at me or say something about it all being beneath you, so I pretended it was all just a bit of fun. I was afraid of being utterly destroyed. But I have nothing left to lose now. I have lost, literally, everything that ever meant anything to me."  
  
"You haven't lost me. You will never lose me." Sherlock's voice comes out as barely more than a whisper. He squeezes John's hand.  
  
John nods. His eyes are fixed on their joined hands, resting there on Sherlock's leg. "That's ... okay, that's good. Because you." John presses his lips together and swallows. He looks grim. Or possibly petrified. "Are. The great love of my life."  
  
It seems surreal that the most momentous statement ever made in the history of the world should be uttered as they are sitting in this frankly squalid little hovel, witnessed only by John's dirty vests, a week-old pizza box (Sherlock can smell it under the bed), and likely a colony of bed bugs (although the red marks on John's wrists and neck might also be due to the cheap washing powder he's been using).  
  
John's chest is heaving as if there isn't enough oxygen in the room. Sherlock thinks perhaps there may not be. John continues to stare steadfastly at their hands. His grip has become almost painful. Sherlock wouldn't want him to loosen it for the world.  
  
"I have a confession to make too," Sherlock says, once he's certain his vocal cords aren't going to betray him.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"I have an unhealthy obsession with you." It's as close as he can get at the moment. He hopes John understands what he means.  
  
John looks up. He understands. Of course he does. His eyes are bright and full of everything he's been holding back for the past six weeks. And the past three years. He laughs. He puts one hand around the back of Sherlock's neck and pulls their foreheads together. The folder on his lap slides onto the floor, all the papers fluttering out. Neither of them moves to pick it up.  
  
John's breath puffs out against Sherlock's face as he laughs. His breath smells sour and yeasty. Sherlock breathes it in and out and in a little more. Particles that have been inside John's lungs are now inside Sherlock's. He wills them to cling to his alveoli. He will never let them go. John is apparently aware of this, yet he is still here. Sherlock is apparently the great love of his life. Sherlock isn't quite sure what that means, but it is probably good. Love is one of those things that eludes Sherlock, yet is important to John. Perhaps what he means is that he will always be here. Sherlock is fine with that. And he thinks, against all odds, perhaps that is what will make John fine again too.


End file.
